by Mary Calmes
He took a quick breath. “Your last sheseru was chosen after Yuri left, and though he wanted to serve your semel, he never cared for you as he should have.”
“Yeah, but not everyone has to be crazy about me.”
“Your sheseru must, above all else, champion and protect the reah of his semel. You have to realize that most of those in the role of sheseru never even lay eyes on the true-mate of a tribe leader. A reah is precious and rare, and Avery Cadim didn’t understand that.”
“He simply was not strong enough to serve,” Yusuke explained, putting her hand on Artem’s other shoulder. “Your sheseru is now strong enough to be both enforcer and protector.”
I turned back to Artem. “Thank you.”
“No thanks are necessary, my reah. It is I who am blessed.”
I glanced at the other man, also down on one knee.
“This is Andrian Basargin, the leader of your semel’s khatyu.”
I smiled at him. “Khatyu are the warriors of the tribe, right?”
He nodded, and I saw how kind his smile was. “Yes, my reah.”
This man was handsome as well, with jet-black glossy hair and dark cobalt blue eyes with deep laugh lines in the corners.
“I was one of the first to meet you many years ago.”
I couldn’t keep from wringing my hands. Part of me was excited and happy to have them all there, to meet them… but that again was the issue. I was meeting them, they were seeing someone they knew, and in Crane’s case especially, knew extremely well. So the flip side was that their presence made me anxious and worried and more torn up inside than I’d been just a day ago. It was both a relief and nerve-racking at the same time. “I wish I could remember.”
“You will, my reah, in your own time.”
The faith was overwhelming, and when he lifted his hand to me, I clasped it tight. It was amazing, the look on his face, like I’d given him something great.
“I really hope that I’m worthy of all this trust,” I murmured.
“You are,” he promised.
“Okay.” I inhaled to get my bearings, releasing his hand. “May I leave here and show you all the city?”
“Of course,” Artem assured me, his voice gravelly and low. “We will do as you desire, my reah.”
It was like a weight was lifted. No one would make me do anything I didn’t want to anymore.
“My reah.”
We all turned to Alaine and his sylvan and sheseru. He had several of his khatyu with him as well.
Yusuke immediately stepped forward, bowed, and then put herself between me and them. “How may we serve you, semel?”
“I would request that your reah greet some members of my tribe.”
She crossed her arms. “Perhaps later this evening, but at present my reah wants to walk the city with us.”
“I will have my sheseru and some of my khatyu—”
“That’s not necessary,” she cut him off sharply. “And you would insult Logan Church, the semel-netjer, if you inferred that his maahen, his sheseru, the beset of his reah, and the leader of his khatyu could not see to the safety of his mate.”
“I—”
“That’s not what you were alluding to, was it?”
“I simply wanted to—”
“Because honestly,” she said flatly, “if you were to insist upon such a course, Artem Varda would have no choice but to challenge your sheseru to mortal combat.”
They all sort of took a community gulp of air.
“No, I—” Alaine stumbled over his words. “I meant no offense, Yusuke Adams. I merely… does mortal combat not seem—”
“How else may such an offense be rectified, semel? I gave you a clear answer, and you disregarded all propriety by insisting that it was not within our ability to protect our own reah.”
“I—”
“I will fight your maahes, if you prefer,” she offered matter-of-factly, as though either was perfectly acceptable.
I lifted my hand to stop her, to interrupt, to tell her I could just stay home with them, but Crane didn’t allow me to touch her and instead pressed a finger to his lips. Apparently I needed to keep my mouth shut.
“Semel?” she prodded.
Alaine was unnerved: from how wide his eyes were and how flushed his face was, it was obvious. “I—we have no maahes. Our tribe is not large enough.”
“I see, well, then, we return to my original offer of combat between the two sheserus.”
“That’s not—”
“Of course, normally there would be no question, as Jin Church is more than capable of seeing to his own safety.”
I was?
“You are,” Crane teased, apparently able to read my mind, whispering in my ear before he elbowed me gently in the ribs.
Turning to him, I snorted out a laugh as he winked at me.
“I await your decision,” Yusuke intoned imperiously, appearing absolutely bored out of her mind.
Holy crap, she was scary! I wouldn’t have wanted to mess with her. For Logan Church to have these people around him spoke great things about him.
“You have my leave,” the semel relented, shooting me a murderous glance.
“Excellent,” Crane said quickly, turning to me. “Come on, let’s go.” He grabbed his wife’s hand, yanking the terrifying woman after him, much to her obvious delight. Her adoration of the man was plain to see and completely leveled her murderous vibe from moments earlier. “Let’s go see the Quarter, people. Where ya wanna go, Jin?”
He treated me like I was nothing but his friend, and I really liked it. He was so easy to be around, and when I darted after him and Yusuke, Artem and Andrian on my left, I had a sense of peace that had been completely missing for as long as I could remember. It felt like the end of not knowing was finally upon me, and the relief was staggering.
When I took hold of Crane’s arm, slipping my hand around his bicep, he didn’t even slow down, just kept walking and talking, asking me what I’d been doing and what I could remember.
I learned as we strode to the streetcar stop and caught one back to the Quarter that he and I had traveled together for many years. We’d been waiters and bartenders and a whole array of other things. It was so good to talk to him, and when I wanted something to drink, he passed me a wallet that had my license and my credit cards in it. It was ridiculous, but being able to buy for them felt really good. I sat there and went through the contents of my wallet, my identification showing a scowl I’d never seen on my own face.
“Yeah, you’re not so much for taking pictures,” Crane quipped.
There were the four credit cards, all platinum ones I was used to taking from guests at the bar when they paid me, a folded note from Ilia that said he loved me with a sweet, misshapen heart drawn in the corner, and various other punch cards: one for the library and several others. It was just a wallet. It could have been anyone’s, but it was special because it was mine, and it tied me to my life and my family and my mate. I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking.
I was hungry, so we stopped at Mr. B’s Bistro on Royal Street and had lunch. Even though I didn’t know them, Crane and the others, I felt safe. Their laughter wasn’t forced, they didn’t care that I was a reah. They cared about me, about Jin, because for better or worse, we were family.
“It’s so odd,” Artem sighed, gazing at me.
“What is?”
“You don’t smell like you,” he answered softly.
I regarded Crane. “What do I normally smell like?”
He squinted. “You smell like burning wood and the forest at night and rain… and a little like vanilla.”
“All that?” I laughed softly.
“All that,” he confirmed. “And when you’re using your power, the smells change.”
“My power?”
“Your nekhene power,” he explained.
Yusuke took hold of my hand, and I winced.
“Oh!” She let go quickly. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I—” I leaned back. “I’m sorry. I want to be close, and it’s a bit better when I touch you instead of you touching me, but there’s no getting around the fact that it hurts.”
“What hurts?”
“The touching.”
“Touching hurts?” Crane asked, concerned. “When you hugged us, it hurt?”
I nodded.
He smiled wide, and I was simply dumbfounded. He was the oddest, most interesting man.
“Why in the world is that a good thing?”
His half laugh, half cough was funny. “It hurts Logan too.”
I jolted involuntarily. “It hurts him to touch people?”
“Yep. He says it feels like thousands of needles.”
“Exactly,” I whispered.
“Everyone but his son hurts him, and we all figured it was because Ilia has some of you in him, and now we just confirmed it.”
“What is he like?”
“Logan?” Crane asked.
“Yes.”
He turned to his wife. “What’s Logan like?”
Her smile was beautiful as she focused on me. “He is the kind of man you pray to be able to serve—he’s like a great king from olden times.”
“Who always does what’s right,” Andrian chimed in.
“Yes,” Artem agreed. “He can always be counted on to make the best choice.”
“And he normally does it, except where you’re concerned.” Crane cackled. “With you, he has no idea what the hell he’s doing.”
Artem laughed. “No, he does not.”
Yusuke joined in. “You get under his skin, Jin, and it’s wonderful.”
“You make him so happy,” Andrian said, chuckling, “and crazed.”
“Why?”
“He’s very contained normally,” Yusuke sighed happily. “He’s unflappable, and then you get near him and he’s sputtering and cursing and growling, and the joy you bring him is just… magical.”
Crane nodded. “God, I’ve missed hearing him laugh.”
“Yes,” Artem agreed. “I’ve forgotten what that sounds like.”
Andrian reached toward me, probably to squeeze my hand in shared affection, but he stopped himself in midmotion.
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically. “I shouldn’t have mentioned anything.”
“Of course you should have, my reah,” Andrian soothed. “I just wanted to tell you that it will be really good to see Logan smile again. The scowl has been etched on his face so long, I was beginning to worry that it might be all we’d ever see.”
“You have to understand,” Yusuke said urgently, leaning forward. “Your semel is golden. His hair, his eyes, his skin—all of him is gold, and when the light is gone from him, he doesn’t even look like himself. He’s not Logan Church anymore.”
“No,” Crane muttered. “He’s not him. His joy’s gone, and with it his warmth and kindness and that strength that we all count on… it’s just not there.”
“Make no mistake,” Yusuke murmured, “he’s still a powerful, fearsome semel, but unfortunately, right now, that’s all there is. Even if he had a yareah, that person could soothe him a bit.”
“But because he has a reah, because he has you,” Crane explained, “the void you left is deeper and darker.”
It was so sad, and it was all because of me, because of whatever choice I’d made. I’d left him missing me and powerless to do anything about it, and more than anything, as lonely and lost as I was. I’d reduced a good, kind, strong man to a shell of his former self. All I wanted was to see him and touch him and repair the hole in his heart. I prayed he’d allow me to try.
“He works very hard not to show us all how angry and desolate and wounded he is, but he’s not the man he was,” Andrian made clear.
“It’s funny,” Crane said with a grin, “but everyone who meets Logan Church falls in love with him just a little. He’s bigger than life. He’s strong and honest, and you know he’ll protect you with everything in him, and it’s like he’s royal, you know? He’s like a king, as Yusuke said: you see him and want to serve. You want to be whatever he needs, if only for a moment.”
“Normally,” Yusuke apprised me, “he spreads warmth wherever he goes. But without you… Jin… that’s gone. He’s cold now.”
And what if, because of that, I’d broken him? Maybe, with my leaving, I’d doused Logan Church’s light forever. Or worse, perhaps he was slowly rebuilding his life in secret and me returning, not knowing him, broke his heart irrevocably so that he was useless to both his son and his tribe? How could I, in good conscience, even see him?
“Stop,” Crane said out of the blue, and all of us at the table regarded him. “Did you hear me?”
“Oh, you were talking to me?”
“Of course I was talking to you, doofus,” he affirmed, squinting at me. “You’re the only one who just slipped down the rabbit hole.”
“I don’t—”
“Logan,” he began, “needs you back. It’s not one of those things where maybe he’d be better off if you never returned. True-mates don’t work like that. Logan is not himself anymore. He’s simply not there. You’re the only one who can fix things.”
“He will be”—Artem choked out—“so pleased to see you.”
“Yes,” Yusuke pledged, her voice bottoming out. “He will be restored.”
But again, what if he wasn’t? What if me not remembering him was the killing stroke to his soul? How could I be responsible for that?
We were all silent for a few moments, and then I broke the quiet with a litany of fears.
“What if I can’t touch him either? What if he doesn’t recognize me as his mate anymore and I—”
“I wouldn’t worry about any of that,” Crane said, reaching across the table for my hand and squeezing it tight, instinctively knowing I needed the closeness at that moment more than I cared about the pain. “You’re his reah, he’s your semel. Nothing changes that, nothing matters but that. Have faith.”
It was all I had to believe in.
Chapter 6
IT WAS a little after six when we returned to the semel’s home. I walked in with the others into a sea of people in the courtyard and immediately stopped, frozen, almost driven to my knees by the throb of arousal that tore through me.
“Jin?” Artem was worried.
I bent over and braced myself on one of the benches, taking shallow breaths, trying to calm my racing heart.
The smell—crisp fall air, a sliver of wind, a tendril of smoke, and sweat and male—he was there. My mate, somewhere. I could practically taste him.
Crane was beside me, leaning over, pressing tight, mouth on my ear. “Logan’s here, I can tell. Can you?”
I nodded.
“You have to find him, it’s the law. Find your mate, claim him, and make him yours again. Everyone is here to witness your return. They have to say they saw the reah find his semel.”
Apparently there was always another test, of fidelity, of the bond, of faith and loyalty. I had to show that I knew my semel, if not on sight, then by smell, by feel, through the vow that lived in our blood. But what would it mean to that connection, to have been apart for so long? Or my memory—how would that factor in? If I didn’t know the man’s face, how could I, in fact, find him? The doubts whirled around in my head even as Crane pushed me forward. I turned back to look at him, and he only nodded, certain, it seemed, that I could do this and that some invisible link between my mate and I would deliver us both.
I pushed into the crowd, searching, checking faces, scared, nervous, but no one jumped out at me; and when I closed in on each, the smell was wrong.
My skin hurt, my body ached, even the breeze on my face was painful. I was overly sensitized; I needed relief. Hungry for my mate, to feel his skin on mine was all I could imagine. Yusuke said he was golden, and so I scanned for that, searched, but there were so many people clustered together, so many scents layered on top of each other, that it became hard to breathe.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I took a last deep breath and then opened them and turned back to the crowd. I felt the tingling in my stomach before I saw him: tall, beautiful, golden. But the closer I got, the less the rippling sensation was there, and so I stopped and turned away.
It was frustrating, and I wasn’t sure what to do… until it came to me.
I had to be still, and so I froze and waited.
Standing in a sea of people, I closed my eyes and listened to my heart. Slowly, I picked out smells, sounds, and whittled everything down to the pulse deep in my chest. Beyond the needs of my body, beyond my animal instincts, beyond what I knew in my head and believed in my heart, once all of that was put aside, there was the essence of me, and I was a reah. I was part of something greater than myself, and when I quit being scared that I wouldn’t find him, there it came again, the pulse, and with it, the second time, a steady sound. I knew what it was.
I could hear his heart.
In my ears, inside my own head, I could hear my mate’s heartbeat.
Listening, concentrating, ignoring everyone around me, I let the driving rhythm pull me forward as I weaved in and out of groups, walked in circles, and finally stood, waiting, and heard him breathe.
Spinning, my head snapped up and all I saw was gold.
I thought when Yusuke said that my mate’s eyes were gold that she’d meant his lashes or his brows, and they were that, but I had no idea that his irises would be gold. That had never crossed my mind.
“Oh,” I whispered, because really, I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life than the man standing in front of me, and more than anything, from deep inside, I had the overwhelming urge to bite him. Mark him. Show everyone that he was mine.
I had worried whether I would recognize him—and every part of me: human, beast, heart, mind, and dear God, body, recognized him as belonging to me.
I took a step forward, reaching out, and he took hold of my hand and squeezed.